Artists
tend to be inherently eccentric, which is why documentaries and biopics about
their lives are often as engaging as the art itself. While this certainly holds
true of Al Carbee, whose bizarre art involving a menagerie of discarded Barbie
dolls is matched only by the quirky personality of the artist himself,
filmmaker Jeremy Workman seems to be constructing a biography which is mostly
rooted in his own personal relationships with the man. Though there is some
value in Carbee’s friendship with Workman, specifically because he doesn’t
appear to have many other loyal friends in his life, this alone is not quite
enough content to fill up a feature film. Even within the first five minutes of
the documentary, Workman (who edited Magical
Universe, as well as producing and directing) re-uses the same footage
twice, which is an instant red flag that the content has been stretched too
thin.
The footage
repeated at the beginning of the film comes from a short film that Workman made
after his first encounter with the enigmatic artist. First we see clips from
this roughly shot short, and then Workman present the five-minute film in its
entirety. Regardless of how much I wanted this material to remain compelling
enough for a feature film, by the end I was convinced that Magical Universe may have been better suited for the short subject
medium. Otherwise the material may have benefited from a filmmaker with some
distance from the subject, because Workman seems to be struggling between the
urge to expose Carbee’s absurd oddities in behavior and a personal need to
honorably immortalize the reclusive man who eventually became a friend.
The art itself
is of questionable quality and worth, though I suppose that the entire point is
that beauty is in the eye of the beholder when art is concerned. Even still,
Carbee’s method of arranging and posing Barbie dolls around his house reminded
me more of the imaginative playground of my childhood than it did art. I would
arrange my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures in homemade dioramas,
imagining that they were real characters who would live out the adventures of
my imagination. Carbee essentially did the same with his Barbie dolls,
additionally photographing the toys that he liked to imagine as real people. The
difference is that I did this when I was 8-years-old; Carbee was immersed in
this behavior at 88.
It may sound as
though I am being somewhat judgmental of Carbee’s art, but even Workman seems
to struggle with this in the presentation of facts within Magical Universe. In one of the film’s more interesting choices, he
even steps back from the construction of the documentary to examine his own
approach. After the first act of the documentary, Workman’s longtime girlfriend
remarks that the documentary is presenting Carbee as something of an obsessive
oddball. Any way that the facts are presented, this is likely to be an
assumption, especially when Carbee becomes enamored with Workman’s girlfriend
for the mere fact that he thinks she looks like a real-live Barbie doll. This
combined with the odd letters and videos that Carbee would send to Workman made
him seem to skew more towards creepy than quirky. I would never judge the
validity of the friendship that these three had with each other, though it
certainly does not come off accessibly within Workman’s documentary. Regardless
of his re-adjusted approach after the first third of the film, Carbee continues
to be presented as more of a lonely weirdo than an eccentric artist.
Even with a mere
77-minutes running-time, Magical Universe
outweighs its welcome. There is simply not enough content or backstory for a
man who rarely left his house. Some of the most engaging segments come from the
discussion of a home that Carbee once lived in, renovated to include hidden
rooms of Barbie displays. It sounds like something out a child’s fantasy mixed
with a prime setting for a slasher film, but this is simply told to the
audience rather than shown. The ending also leaves something to be desired,
lacking the emotional impact that Workman may have hoped. The simple fact is
that Carbee clearly meant a great deal to the filmmaker, but Workman is never
quite able to transfer those feelings of adoration and friendship over the
audience. The result is similar to watching home videos; one can imagine they
mean something to the person who compiled the footage, but that doesn’t make it
universally relevant or impactful. The special features include additional
content through a series of featurettes. There is also a teaser and a trailer
for the film.
Entertainment Value:
6/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 5.5/10
Historical
Significance: 3/10
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